Female US president 'will be elected', Clinton tells French radio

Hillary Clinton, widely expected to be the Democratic candidate in the next US presidential election, told French radio Friday that a woman will “one day” take over the White House, but refused to say whether she thought it would be her.

“I don’t know when it will happen, or who will be elected, but I think that, yes, a woman will one day be elected to the White House,” she said in an interview with radio station France Inter.

Despite widespread speculation, Clinton has so far refused to confirm if she will enter the race to be the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential elections.

She narrowly lost to Barack Obama in a hard-fought 2008 primary campaign, before becoming his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

The former first lady is currently on a media tour to promote her new book “Hard Choices”, though many see the tour and the increased media exposure as a prelude to a presidential campaign.

Clinton herself has said she will decide later this year whether to make a second run for president.

Glass ceiling

If a female president were elected, it could have a profound effect on American society, shattering the “glass ceiling” faced by women in politics and other high profile positions in the country, she told the radio station, drawing comparisons with Obama’s election as the US’s first black president.

“It was a strong positive signal for African-Americans in the US and around the world when Barack Obama was elected and I think a female president … would send that strong signal as well,” she said.

Clinton said that although she had put “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling”, referring to the number of votes gained in her failed primary campaign, barriers for women in US politics remained very much in place.

“In the US women represent 53 percent of the population, more than half the population, but there are nowhere near those numbers in our congress, in our state governments or in boardrooms.

“There is a lot more work to do to break the glass ceiling.”

Clinton’s book details her time as Obama’s secretary of state including her encounters with a host of world leaders, including former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whom she revealed she “liked very much”.

“I enjoyed my time with him and as I say in the book it was always an energizing experience to meet with him because he’s got opinions on everything,” she told France Inter.